


Golden keys

by sad_eyed_lady_of_the_low_lands



Category: The Magicians (TV), The Magicians - Lev Grossman
Genre: Angst, Gen, I'd say the title was a work in progress but I say that every time and I never change it, canon compliant as of the end of season two, my take on season three basically, no worse than the show though, penny's kind of an arsehole so probably warnings for ableism, season three will undoubtedly make this an AU but whatever, sorry Quentin, this is how I'd do the golden keys storyline, warnings for discussions of mental health issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-16
Packaged: 2018-10-30 12:24:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10876731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sad_eyed_lady_of_the_low_lands/pseuds/sad_eyed_lady_of_the_low_lands
Summary: Julia considers this, for a moment, “how do we open the doors?” Her voice is ice cold.“There are keys,” Penny says.“Literal keys?”“Literal keys,” he confirms, digging into his trouser pockets he pulls out a literal key. It’s a large key, golden and ornamental and enchanted as shit, currently it’s hanging from a large, equally ornamental ring, “there’s six more, scattered across Fillory. If we’re gonna open the door we have to find them first.”Otherwise known as, I really love the golden keys storyline in the Magician King so have a slightly odd bastardization of the show and the book storylines!





	1. Chapter 1

Penny re-materialises in the middle of a courtyard. He doesn’t know which, exactly, Brakebills has a lot of courtyards, the fact that they _move_ doesn’t help either.   
It’s dark on Earth, Penny’s not sure how late it is exactly, but he’d guess it was after midnight. The buildings surrounding the courtyard must be classrooms because all of the lights are off. Pulling his hood up Penny strides out of the courtyard, takes a moment to orient himself, and heads to the physical kids cottage.

It’s empty. 

Not just, slightly empty, not just, gone out tonight coming back in the morning empty. It’s empty, empty. Not been occupied for _weeks_ empty. The cupboards are bare and the living room’s covered in a thin layer of dust. Deserted the cottage feels twice it’s size. The only room that looks lived in is Quentin’s, which, frankly looks like it’s been hit by a bomb. 

“Shit,” Penny breathes, his gaze casting over the disarray of the room. He doesn’t _think_ it’s been tossed. Quentin’s not exactly the most organised person, and the chaos looks more like “student housing” that the aftermath of a search or a fight. Penny leafs, halfheartedly through Quentin’s shit. Mostly it’s just clothes, and books. He finds a laptop on the desk, but it’s unplugged and switched off. The room’s been occupied more recently that the rest of the cottage, but Q’s been gone a week at least. Penny has no reason to assume he’s coming back any time soon and even if he is, there isn’t time to just sit and wait. With a frustrated huff Penny closes his eyes and starts an incantation, it’s half psychic scan half locator spell. 

Using magic without your hands takes a little getting used to. It’s different to traditional casting, more involved, more intense. Penny can feel the magic thrumming through him, wrapping him up, his body tingles with it, if you look, really look, you can see tiny blue sparks racing along his skin as he casts. 

He reaches out for Quentin first, his psychic footprint is always infuriatingly easy to find, if he’s on campus, Penny’ll know.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Penny groans because of course Quentin’s not on campus, neither’s Alice, or even Kady, but Julia fucking Wicker _is_. 

 

Penny bangs loudly on the door, before appearing in Julia’s room. It’s in one of the dorm buildings for unsorted first years, the room’s small and narrow and contains only the bare necessities for human existence. Julia’s on the bed when Penny enters, she screams when she see’s him, shoving her laptop off her lap and jumping to her feet. Balanced precariously on the bed she adopts a stance Penny recognises, the stance of someone preparing to fire off battle magic.

_Some habits die hard._

“Hey! Hey chill out!” Penny steps further into the room, Julia’s mouth drops open, her shoulders going slack.

“…Penny?” Julia breathes, “What- I-How are you-“ she cuts herself off and stares at him with equal parts amazement and distrust. “What the fuck?”

“Julia,” Penny speaks as though the words leave a bad taste in his mouth, “I can’t belive I’m _actually_ saying this, but I need your help.”

“Oh no!” Julia clambers down to Penny’s level, “you need to explain what the _fuck_ is going on!”

“How did you get here?” Julia jabs a finger in Penny’s chest.

Penny glares at her, his hackles raising, “I don’t have to answer to _you,_ ” he sneers. 

Julia shrugs, “you came looking for me, not the other way around, so you can either explain, or get out.”

“I only came to _you_ because everyone else is gone,” Penny spits. 

Julia holds his gaze, unflinching. 

Penny throws his hands up in defeat, “it’s complicated.”

“Excellent,” there’s a glint in Julia’s eyes. “You can still use magic.”

“Well aren’t you Sherlock fucking Holmes,” Penny rolls his eyes, but he carries on before Julia can object, “magic’s dying.”

“I noticed.”

“It’s not dead yet, we can still stop this.”

“How?” Julia steps closer now, the distrust melting from her face is replaced by something else, something like intrigue. 

“look,” Penny sighs again, shifting his weight, “we were never meant to have magic. The Old God’s fucked up, left us a loop hole and we exploited the shit out of it. For the most part they left us alone. Make no mistake they have no fondness for us, we were simply too small for them to care about, a bug on the wall, mildly annoying, but not relevant enough to do anything about. But the Quentin went and fucking killed Ember-“

“And then they came back to clean up their mess, yeah. _I know._ ” Julia folds her arms across her chest and frowns at him. 

“The order planned for this,” Penny snaps, “they built us a back door.”

“A back door into _what_?”

“The well spring.”

“The well spring?” Julia’s eyebrows knit together, it’s almost endearing. Almost.

“That’s the loop hole. The well springs the source, the neitherlands are built around it, it runs through everything.”

“Holy shit,” Julia’s voice is a whisper.

“Some of the fountains in the neitherlands aren’t fountains, they just open up on this… Honestly they look like fucking sewers, only, cleaner. There’s this whole network down there, it lets the wellspring, let’s _magic_ flow through to the rest of the multiverse, or whatever the fuck-“

“That’s why they look like plumbers,” Julia’s voice is still soft, her expression far away, “and now they’re diverting the flow?”

Penny nods, “like throwing up a dam.”

“But dam’s take time.”

Penny nods again, more enthusiastically this time, “magic’s still flowing, it’s just weak, especially out here, Earth’s pretty far from the source. Until the flow stops completely we can still fix this, if we can open the back door, we can fix this, but we don’t have a lot of time.”

“The order knew this would happen?”

“Not exactly, guess they just weren’t happy leaving the fate of magic in the hands of the Gods,” Penny shrugs, “power to them, I guess. They knew magic was a cosmic glitch, they made sure no God could ever take it from us.”

“Huh,” Julia says, “that still doesn’t explain how you can do magic.”

“I drank from the wellspring”

“You did _what?_ ”

“Don’t you start on me!” Penny steps forward, pulling himself up to full height and towering over her, she doesn’t budge. "I was _dying, magic_ was dying, we needed someone who could cast, and I had nothin' else to loose."

"So that's why you can still use magic? That's why you're not dead?"

Penny nods.

Julia considers this, for a moment, “how do we open the doors?” Her voice is ice cold.

“There are keys,” Penny says. 

“Literal keys?”

“Literal keys,” he confirms, digging into his trouser pockets he pulls out a literal key. It’s a large key, golden and ornamental and enchanted as shit, currently it’s hanging from a large, equally ornamental ring, “there’s six more, scattered across Fillory. If we’re gonna open the door we have to find them first.”

“Scattered across- _Why?!_ ” Julia exclaims. 

“We don’t have time for this,” Penny growls, shoving the key back in his pocket. If he’s being honest he agrees, scattering the keys was fucking stupid. He’d told the librarian as much, the answer had been vague and infuriating, “are you in or not.”

“Of course I’m fucking in! Just… Let me change first,” she’s wearing, ironically, Penny hopes, a Harry fucking Potter shirt and a pair of grey short shorts.

 

“Hey,” Penny says, as a freshly changed Julia shoves clothes and books into a duffle bag, “where the fuck is everyone?”

“Um,” Julia pauses to skim through a textbook before hastily shoving it back on the shelf and grabbing another, “you’ll have to be more specific.”

“Alice? Kady? _Quentin?_ ”

“Ah,” Julia says, her back’s to him so he can’t see her face, but her tone worries him. “Alice, she… Pissed a lot of people off as a niffin, some of them came looking for her and… She ran, two months ago, I- No one’s seen her since.”

“ _Shit_. Kady?”

“I’m sorry, Penny,” Julia turns to face him now, “I haven’t seen her, not since before this all went down.”

Penny grunts, Kady’s a big girl, she can look after herself, “great. What about Quentin?”

Julia freezes, “oh, Quentin?” she says, Penny can practically see the cogs spinning, “um, Quentin- Quentin’s in the hospital.”

“Shit.” He doesn’t have time to run around breaking Quentin fucking Coldwater out of the fucking psych ward. “Is he… Okay?”

“No,” Julia says, in a tone that implies it was a stupid question, “not really.”

“ _Shit._ ”

Julia’s not thrilled at the prospect of dragging Q out of hospital and into a quest to save magic, but she doesn’t object. They both know Quentin needs this more than any of them.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon typical discussions of mental health

The room’s small and cold looking. The walls are all painted white and the only things in room are a bed which is pushed up against a long wall, under a window, and a small cabinet with a book and a glass of water set on the top. The air has a faintly clinical smell to it, something like disinfectant mixed with dorm room. For a second Penny think’s the room’s empty, then he spots the top of Quentin’s head protruding from under the duvet and the mass of bedding reorganises itself into a vaguely humanoid shape. 

Julia goes to Quentin, Penny goes to the door, which is locked. Frowning Penny raises his hands, murmurs a chant in Latin, and jerks his arm to the right, the locks strains for a second, before clicking open. 

“Oh, hey Jules,” Quentin says, sleepily in the background as Penny puts his shoulder to the door and leans out into the corridor.   
The corridor’s long, and white and the scent of disinfectant’s even stronger now. It curves, sharply to the left a few hundred yards ahead meaning Penny can’t see the end, he’s debating stepping out further when there’s a yelp and a sharp _thump_ from behind.   
He turns to see Quentin pressed up against the wall staring wide eyed at him and Julia. 

“Wh-how? No- You can’t-“ Quentin stutters. Penny doesn’t need to be psychic to see he’s freaking out. 

“Shh, Q, it’s okay,” Julia’s saying, she’s crouched in front of the bed, her voice soft and soothing. 

Quentin shakes his head, pulling his knees to his chest and wrapping his arms around them, “this isn’t real, this _can’t_ be real you can’t _be_ here,”

Penny rocks back on his heels, rolling his eyes. Brushing past Julia, who’s still talking in that slow, calm voice, he leans over and pinches Quentin, hard on the arm.

“That real enough for you, dickhead?”

Quentin yelps and topples over sideways, rubbing his arm, “ow?! Jesus was that _really_ necessary?”

Before either of them can respond Quentin continues, “how are you here? How are _you_ ,” he jabs a finger at Penny, “still alive? I thought- I thought you,“ he breaks off his face falling slightly. 

“You thought wrong!” Penny snaps at him, folding his arms across his chest. 

“It’s a long story,” Julia says, picking herself up and perching on the bed. She holds her hand out to Quentin, which he regards, skeptically for a moment before accepting. 

“Tell me,” he says. 

Penny heaves a long suffering sigh. 

 

 

“Can I see it?” Quentin asks when Penny’s done.

“See _what?_ ”

“The key,” Quentin says, impatiently. 

Rolling his eyes Penny tosses it to him, which turns out to be a mistake as Quentin misses it completely and it lands on the bed a few feet to his right.   
Quentin spares a moment to scowl at Penny before picking it up. 

“How can you cast? I mean, your hands still don’t work, right?” Quentin asks, holding the key about an inch from his face, running his fingers over the surface. 

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Penny stares at him, spreading his arms in the universal gesture of _can you fucking belive this guy?_ “Did you actually fucking listen to a word I just said?”

“Penny!” Julia hisses at him.

“What do you _want_ from me, Penny?” Quentin doesn’t look up, but he goes still.

“Oh, I don’t know maybe some indication you’re paying the slightest bit of attention here!”

“I am, alright! Jesus! I just- that’s the only part that doesn’t make sense,” Quentin says, looking up to glare in what could vaguely be described as Penny’s direction. 

“The librarian fucking showed me how to it, okay? Guess having me able to use magic was finally more fucking convenient for her.”

Quentin nods, going back to studying the key. 

“Do you actually give a shit about any of this?” Penny steps forward, looming over Quentin, who throws his hands up in exaggerated frustration

“Oh my god! I am _sorry_ if my reaction doesn’t meet up with your expectations. Get back to me in the morning when the fucking sleeping pills wear off and I’m sure I can muster an emotionally appropriate response for you-“

“Enough!” Julia snaps, jumping to her feet, “both of you, we don’t have time for this.”

Penny’s loath to admit it, but she’s right, “get up,” he grunts at Q, “let’s go.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” Quentin says, at the same time as Julia says, “hold on.”

_“What?”_

Julia turns to Quentin, face full of concern “are you sure you want to do this? Q you don’t-“

“Don’t, Jules, please,” Quentin cuts her off, “you know I don’t have a choice. I’ll be okay.”  
They hold each others gaze for one long, nauseating moment, before Julia nods. 

“I need my stuff back,” Quentin says, unfolding himself from the bed. 

“What stuff?”

Quentin rolls his eyes, “I had things on me when I was admitted, I want them back. And I-I need to liberate some drugs from their pharmacy.”

It’s almost disappointingly easy to break into the office/pharmacy. Admittedly this probably has something to do with Penny’s ability to teleport but whatever.   
He dumps them in the office and fires off two quick sleep spells on the night staff while Quentin and Julia start rummaging through storage cabinets behind him. After a few minuets Quentin gives a triumphant “hah!” and hoists up his stupid messenger bag and a plastic carrier bag, which turns out to have Quentin’s clothes in it. Quentin ducks into the pharmacy, which conveniently is located off the office, when he comes out he’s wearing jeans and a grey sweater in place of the hospital issue pyjama’s and hastily shoving a pharmacy bag in his satchel. 

“You ready?”

Quentin nods.


End file.
